The court of Charles II and the bid for global empire

1. The court of Charles II and the bid for global empire Gabriel Glickman

2. Changes in English imperialism after 1660 • Foreign policy a greater concern in public debates e.g. the pamphlet press. • Attempted expansion/ consolidation of existing American territories. • Imperial ideas generated in other parts of the world e.g. India, north and west Africa. • Imperial ideology propounded by supporters of the court. • John Dryden (1668) – sees international battle for ‘the greater half of the globe, the commerce of nations and the riches of the universe’.

3. Constraints on the Stuart Empire • Lack of crown wealth/resources. • Tensions with or within the colonies. • Threat of rival European powers. • Threat of native peoples. • Growth of domestic political instability in the 1670s.

4. A new imperial ideology? • Legacy of Cromwell’s Western Design: capture of Jamaica, demonstration of state’s ability to put a major fleet into the Atlantic. • Continuity of imperial concerns and imperial rhetoric after 1660 Restoration - focused on commercial and maritime potential as route to national greatness. • Thomas Sprat (clergyman and Fellow of the Royal Society): ‘Tis true that England is not the seat of the Empire of the world: But it may be of that which confines the world it self, the Ocean: To this Dominion our Nation is invited, by the Situation of our shores, the inclination of our people’.

5. Imperial legislation under Charles II • September 1660 – ‘Act for the encouraging and increasing of shipping and navigation’ (Navigation Act). • 1663 – Staple Act. • Retention of Council of Trade established under Cromwell. • 1670 – Creation of Council for the Plantations. • 1672 – Merger creates Council for Trade and the Plantations, with establishment of the Plantation Office. • 1676-7 – Naval reforms of Samuel Pepys at the Board of Admiralty.

6. Imperial acquisitions • Retention of Jamaica – against Spanish opposition: Port Royal becomes fastest growing town in the Empire. • 1661 – marriage of Charles II to Princess Catherine of Braganza: acquisition of Tangier and Bombay. • 1664 – capture of New Amsterdam from the Dutch: conversion of the city into New York. • [By contrast Dunkirk sold to the French – Charles aiming to create oceanic, not continental powerbase]

7. The ‘empire of the seas’ • Influence of Royal Society thinkers on English imperial ideology – Robert Boyle, Thomas Sprat, John Evelyn. • Maritime empire promoted as alternative to extensive land conquests. • Idea of empire gained through monopoly over global commerce, with limited territorial holdings. • John Evelyn (Navigation and Commerce): ‘whoever commands the ocean commands the trade of the world, whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world, and whoever is master of that commands the world itself’.

8. An empire of trade • Commodities worth £900,000 being shipped across Atlantic annually by 1685 – esp. tobacco (Virginia), sugar (West Indies), cotton, ginger, indigo. • Royal African Company – 18 factories on Guinea Coast, esp. for trade in ivory and slaves. • East India Company – key bases in Madras, Calcutta and (after 1667) Bombay: dominate European trade in Asian spices, silk and Asian/ Middle Eastern coffee. • Sir Robert Southwell (1685): ‘Trade and Navigation has infected the whole Kingdom... by this means the very genius of the people is alter’d...’ • Companies aim to establish permanent settlements in Africa and India – 150,000 families under governance of EIC. • Sir Josiah Child – EIC aiming to establish ‘English politicall government in India’, to be ‘no longer meer merchants’.

9. America still the centre of the English Empire • 500,000 people leave English shores to settle overseas 1600-1700: 80 per cent go to America. • 90,000 people of English descent living in American colonies, 1689. • Focus of settlement remains i) Chesapeake ii) New England iii) Caribbean • 1650-1700 - immigration to the Chesapeake averaging c. 16-20,000 per decade – c. 70-80 per cent = indentured servants, African slaves 13 per cent of population by 1700. • Hierarchical society in Chesapeake and West Indies, dominated by large-scale planters – example of Sir Thomas Modyfordas governor of Barbados and then Jamaica. • Contrast with more urban, non-slaveholding economy in New England.

10. Crown vs Proprietors? • Weakness of crown’s fiscal and military resources means continual reliance on proprietary or ‘company’ colonies. • Creation of new proprietary domains – Carolina (1663), East and West New Jersey (1676), Pennsylvania (1681). • Proprietary rule means religious and political disunity preserved within the Empire e.g. Pennsylvania run by Quakers. • Massachusetts Bay Company accused of flouting Navigation Acts, suppressing Church of England, shielding fugitive ex-Cromwellians. • Thomas Modyford in Jamaica using pirates against Spanish vessels at time of 1670 peace proceedings.

11. Colonial instability • 1676-7 – factional conflict in Virginia and Carolina – Bacon’s Rebellion, Culpeper’s Rebellion. • 1676 – ‘King Philip’s War’ – wave of major Indian invasions from Massachusetts to Virginia: 600 English killed, 3,000 Indians. • Settlements in Tangier and India overthrown by wars with local powers 1684-1687. • Defeats to European rivals e.g. French seizure of St Kitt’s (1666), Dutch capture of Surinam (1667), New York (1672-3 – though later handed back) and Banten (1683); Spanish destruction of Scottish Carolina settlements (1686).

12. 1676-1685 –further centralisation • 1676 – New Hampshire converted into a royal colony. • 1677 – 1,000 troops sent into Virginia to suppress Bacon’s rebellion; royal commissioners enter Massachusetts. • Termination of the Massachusetts Bay Charter - imposition of royal control. • Promotion of new governors – army officers rather than planters or local merchants e.g. Sir William Stapleton (Leeward Islands), Sir Thomas Dongan (New York):rare example of Catholic governance. • 1685 – James II merges New York and New England colonies into the Dominion of New England, to be governed by viceroys.

13. Domestic tensions – loss of consensus over foreign policy • Emergence of Country Party (later Whig party) in Westminster Parliament – critique of royal policies for facilitating growth in Catholic power at home and abroad. • Attack power of Catholic faction under James, duke of York (the major advocate of empire at court). • Attack on court’s acquiescence in growth of French power under Louis XIV in Western Europe. • Empire seen as major distraction from greater European struggle.

14. Critiques of the Stuart Empire • Carew Reynell (1674)‘It concerns the English... not to waste men in large and unprofitable Territories, which hath ruin’d the Spaniard’. • William Petyt (1680), ‘the plantations may be considered the true grounds and causes of all our present mischiefs’. • Silus Titus MP – putting colonies before defence of Europe = ‘like Nero, when Rome was on fire, to fiddle’. • Ralph Montagu MP (1679): ‘I had rather see the Moors in Tangier, than the Pope in England’.